Iran yesterday went to the UN’s highest court in a bid to have US sanctions lifted following US President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to reimpose them, calling the move “naked economic aggression.”
Iran filed the case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, claiming that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on May 8 breach a 1955 bilateral agreement known as the Treaty of Amity that regulates economic and consular ties between the two countries.
At hearings that started yesterday at the court’s headquarters in The Hague, Tehran asked judges at the court to urgently suspend the sanctions to protect Iranian interests while the case challenging their legality is being heard — a process that can take years.
Trump in May said that he would pull the US out of a 2015 agreement over Iran’s nuclear program and would reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Washington also threatened other countries with sanctions if they do not cut off Iranian oil imports by early November.
Iranian representative Mohsen Mohebi told the court that the US decision was a clear breach of the 1955 treaty as it was “intended to damage, as severely as possible, Iran’s economy.”
Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal imposed restrictions on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of most US and international sanctions against Tehran.
However, the deal came with time limits and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its regional policies in Syria and elsewhere.
Mohebi said the reimposition of sanctions was unjustified since Iran was abiding by the terms of the 2015 deal. He said sanctions are already having damaging effects on Iran’s economy and society, and threaten to further destabilize the Middle East.
“This policy is nothing but a naked economic aggression against my country,” Mohebi told the court.
The US, which argues that the court does not have jurisdiction in the case, is to present its legal arguments to judges today.
Iran and the US have a history of litigation at the ICJ, in cases covering crises, including the Tehran embassy hostage-taking and the shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet mistaken by a US warship for a fighter jet.
The 1955 treaty was signed when the US and Iran were still allies following the 1953 revolution, but diplomatic relations were severed following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and takeover of the US embassy.
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